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Valve's Linux Play May Lead More Games To Follow Suit

05-25-2010, 12:20 PM

Phoronix: Valve's Linux Play May Lead More Games To Follow Suit

Brought up in the Phoronix Forums yesterday by a reader was a reference to Ryan Gordon's resume that he was contracted to port Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 to Linux. This led a Phoronix reader to email Ryan "Icculus" Gordon and now we managed to get our hands on Ryan's e-mail response...

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Yes exactly what sources do you have that confirms that Valve actually is going to release Steam for Linux. It seems to me more probable to me that your "source" the telegraph since not mentioning their source got the release announcement from you and you in turn made more news from their assumption that you had anything official.

Yes it is obvious that the binaries are there, but that does not change the politics of a business.

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Some background: RO was originally a UT2k4 mod that had a Linux port. When Tripwire won a "Make Something Unreal" contest they got the rights to the UT engine for free (I believe they had the choice of UT 2.5 or UT 3 at the time.) They decided to go with Steam as the content delivery method and I believe for networking/friends/etc. Shortly after this, on the forums there was a thread about the prospect of them continuing with a Linux port. IIRC the developers said if there was a native Linux Steam client it would be possible for them to continue supporting Linux. I think they also had a screenshot of the new version running on Linux in house (which couldn't do networking because it relied on Steam.)

That was a few years ago. I haven't really followed them recently because of the lack of Linux support, nor did I buy RO:O41-45 (I don't remember how it was abbreviated to be honest.) Basically I'm not too surprised they're going back to cross platform development now that Steam is cross platform (at least two official platforms.)

Hopefully if/when the Linux Steam client is released I'll finally be able to buy this RO game because I really enjoyed the original mod.

I can't really say this for sure, but I'd guess Ryan was meaning there's no official Steam client for Linux. The full quote seems to imply that at least...

Originally posted by Ryan Gordon

If there were a port of Steam for Linux, we'd almost certainly do a Linux client, too, but at the moment there isn't one outside of those poking around the Steam binaries on the Phoronix forums, so we haven't even started looking at a Linux client.

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It seems to me more probable to me that your "source" the telegraph since not mentioning their source got the release announcement from you and you in turn made more news from their assumption that you had anything official.

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I can't really say this for sure, but I'd guess Ryan was meaning there's no official Steam client for Linux. The full quote seems to imply that at least...

The implication would be that. I know Elecorn's not been appraised of anything on that score (Mike Smith would have told me so we could be packaging up for it as well..). That doesn't mean Michael doesn't have an inside source on the subject (no pun intended...)- but in the same vein, like I've said before...there's only so far you can carry things on this subject without an official statement from Valve.

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Phoronix did not mentioned a completed linux client, but was talking about a linux client in development that wil be delivered soon. Nothing in the article excudes this statement. Although Ryan chose his words with care and consideration for nuances.

In my experience phoronix is better informed than some of the impatient visitors here. Who make unsubstantiated statements 'without' reconizing any nuances or having considerations for the fact that phoronix has proven to be rather well informed.